In front lay a perfectly flat snow-covered plain--the sea-ice. In point
of fact we had arrived at the eastern side of the Mertz Glacier and were
about fifteen miles north of the mainland. Old sea-ice, deeply covered
in snow, lay ahead for miles, and the hazy, blue coast sank below the
horizon in the south-east, running for a time parallel to the course we
were about to take. It was some time before we realized all this, but at
noon on the following day there came the first reminder of the proximity
of sea-water.

An Adelie penguin, skiing on its breast from the north, surprised us
suddenly by a loud croak at the rear of the sledge. As astonished as
we were, it stopped and stared, and then in sudden terror made off. But
before starting on its long trek to the land, it had to be captured and
photographed.

To the south the coast was marked by two faces of rock and a short, dark
spur protruding from beneath the ice-cap. As our friendly penguin had
made off in that direction, we elected to call the place Penguin Point,
intending to touch there on the return journey. During the afternoon
magnetic dips and a round of angles to the prominences of the mainland
were taken.

The next evidence on the sea-ice question came in the shape of a line
of broken slabs of ice to the north, sticking out of the snow like the
ruins of an ancient graveyard. At one hundred and fifteen miles the
line was so close that we left the sledge to investigate it, finding
a depression ten feet deep, through which wound a glistening riband of
sea-water. It reminded one of a creek in flat, Australian country, and
the illusion was sustained by a dark skua gull--in its slow flight much
like a crow. It was a fissure in old thick sea-ice.

Sunday, and the first day of December, brought good weather and a clear
view of the mainland. A bay opened to the east of Penguin Point, from
which the coast trended to the south-east. Across a crack in the sea-ice
we could just distinguish a low indented line like the glacier-tongue,
we had already crossed. It might have been a long promontory of land for
all we knew. Behind it was a continuous ice-blink and on our left, to
the north, a deep blue "water sky." It seemed worth while continuing on
an easterly course approximately parallel with the coast.

We were faced by another glacier-tongue; a fact which remained unproven
for a week at least. From the sea-ice on to the glacier--the Ninnis
Glacier--there was a gentle r